How To Choose Fun And Engaging Baby Shower Activities

If you’re hosting a baby shower, you'll need to plan some activities that give your guests an opportunity to interact with each other and with the expectant mom. These games and activities can be quite elaborate or very simple, depending on your particular tastes and interests.

For the average baby shower, you’ll probably want to plan about three to four games. You want the guests to be engaged in the activities and get to know one another – but overdo it with too many games, and the fun of the games becomes a chore.

One popular game is to give each guest a diaper pin to pin on her top, along with the instructions that she isn’t to say the word “baby.” If she says the word “baby,” and another guest catches her, that guest has the right to demand her diaper pin. The guest with the most pins wins a prize when the gifts are being opened. This is a classic game because it allows the guests to interact with each other, creates some friendly competition and makes it very amusing to hear the lengths people will go to to avoid saying the word “baby” at a “baby” shower!

Another fun game is to give each guest a length of string or yarn. Have the expectant mom stand in the center of the circle and model her “baby bump.” Then have each guest cut their string or yarn to the length they think will fit exactly around the expectant mom's middle. When everyone is ready, have the guests try their string. It’s usually very entertaining to see just how wrong some of the guesses are! The guest with the closest estimation wins a small gift – perhaps something made from yarn or a really nice apron for the winner to tie around her own middle.

Another game that’s very engaging requires some plates, spoons and several jars of baby food. In this case, baby food with similar colors – like peaches, apples, squash and carrots – works well. Out of sight of the guests, prepare several plates with samples of several different baby foods, all in the same order. All of the guests will need to sample the baby foods and guess what each of them is. You’ll find that it can be surprisingly difficult to tell what the various foods are.

Or, if you're daring enough, you can put samples of different baby foods into disposable diapers and pass the diapers around for guests to smell to see if they can determine what food the diaper contains! Whichever version of the game you choose, give a prize to the person who correctly identifies the most foods. You might want to have a tie breaker food or more than one prize in the event of a tie. A nice prize for this kind of game would be a small basket of fruit or a basket featuring all the ingredients used to prepare a recipe featuring one of the ingredients you’ve tasted.